One Shots: Rune's Stories
by LadyRune
Summary: Based in the Star Wars Universe--Eh, a series of one shots that will be posted together for severe laziness in not wanting to create a new thing for each of them. Merely to quell my current obsession with a Little Rune. L, V, AS
1. blind

**_Blind_**

****

**_AN:_** Eh, a series of one shots that will be posted together for severe laziness in not wanting to create a new thing for each of them. Merely to quell my current obsession with a Little Rune.

***

It wasn't always like this. There were times when the white-haired child felt true happiness, often in the bright warmth of her brother's compliments or her father's touch. Those moments, although few, always brought as mile to the sullen girl's face, flushing pink into her ghostly cheeks. If she closed her eyes tight enough, she could even see them now, her brother standing like a youthful mirror behind her father, and she couldn't help but return her blood sibling's grin as her father released her from the burden of female heir. Her father smiled, too, then. He always said he'd rather have her by his side as a son than wasting her talents as a lady of her house with her stepmother and baby sister. Things like that should never be able to be forgotten, although she found it harder and harder to even recall her father's face, those features that were so masculine yet similar to hers. Now, she was afraid that if she opened her eyes, she would never be able to regain his memory again. Of course, her father would scoff at that, and tell her to stop looking to the past, but it was really the only thing she had left in this strange place. It was true that anything was better than being human sewage beneath a city she didn't know the name of and had only seen once. Just the thought of going back made her meticulous construction waver. Now, she would never go back there, but even here, she was one step farther from her homeland where she_ should_ be. The girl didn't even know where here was, except that parts were above ground, parts were below ground, and everywhere she could feel the cold tingle that meant there were others here. One, a boy only slightly older than her for what she could tell, was standing in the doorway. But if she focused and kept her eyes closed, she could think she was really at home, or even ignore if it was all a dirty lie, and she was still in those dark, horrible alleyways.

"Hey!" The boy stepped into the room when the pale girl didn't turn around, didn't even acknowledge he was there. "Didn't you hear me you dirty little urchin? I was asking why the hell you're in this wing. It's for students only."

_Never show weakness, never give your opponent an opening._ He thought she was a servant. She had too much pride for that.

The girl, bowed over her folded knees, lifted her head, pushing the fine white hair behind an ear. "That is why I am here," she spoke softly in slow, measured basic.

Heavy boots clacking against the polished stone floors, he took another step into the room. The light here was very dim, no brighter than candlelight. At least the man who brought her was kind enough to let her eyes adjust. When he paused again, she knew he was taking the second chance to size her up.

 "You must be Rune then, from Coruscant," he said in a way that left no room for argument even if she wasn't. He added spitefully, "the _new_ one."

The boy made it clear that he wasn't asking, so Rune didn't reply. IF she kept recalling her family, he would simply fade away. Besides, she didn't like him in the least. He kept talking as if he was afraid that if he were silent, no one would know he was there.

 "Hn, not like it matters, anyways. I doubt I'll see too much of you." Even without opening her eyes, the girl could see him strike a cocky pose, his fists on his hips. "After all, I'm THE Dark Lord's _personal_ student. Little street whores like you wouldn't know the first thing about—"

 "Mykaeval?" Rune's soft voice broke into the boy's tirade. The man had said little, but he had mentioned…"Are you…Eliath? He said I would be with you…"

The boy sputtered and rocked back onto his heels with another audible click. "How dare you speak so disrespectfully!" A low chuckle escaped and he drew in a ragged breath. "Of course, a sewer rat would have those kinds of manners." Eliath began to circle the kneeling girl slowly, each word dripping contempt. 

With a rustle of material near to her face, he paused. "Your eyes are closed," he observed. "Aww, are the lights too bright? Weak little fool. We never should have taken in some filthy Underworlder. Hey!" he snapped. "Look at your superiors when they speak!"

Reluctant, the girl opened her eyes, blinking as her vision adjusted. Then she wearily climbed to her feet. The man had told her that Eliath was at least a year or two her senior, but she easily stood a finger's width above the preteen, brilliant green calmly meeting boiling onyx as the boy realized the height difference. Arrogant, but obviously nobility, he had thick, black hair tied to at the base of his neck. Although his elaborate robes were in stark comparison to her simply shirt and pants, he had seen some activity. The bridge of his nose had an awkward angle to it and sported the pink flush of sunburn. A long gash, just healing, bisected his jawbone.

Not missing a beat, he began to survey her as one would livestock. "Pretty enough, I suppose. As soon as Master tires of you, though, you won't be much to look at."

Rune stood rigidly still as he made his languid way around her once more. "A shame though, I really thought you were one of those albinos that live Below. Those green eyes throw it all off. Guess you're just a freak…"

It wasn't too much of a movement, no more than a tandem pull and a push, though the feeling lingered in the air, thick, violent, and opaque, long after the boy made it to the hallway, muttering, "I HATE her, goddamn bitch." But everyone knew Eliath was luck to escape with just a dislocated shoulder and a bruised ego.


	2. love

**_Love_**

**_AN:_** I apologize ahead of time. I'm dropping one-liners here from various songs, and I'm afraid they may be really obvious, but that's how I get ideas for one shots. Oh, and because of my own shortsightedness, Eliath has been given a last name. ^_^ L, V, AS…all that good stuff.

***

Fifteen, she supposed, although she never celebrated a birthday and couldn't remember when hers was, since the time here was different than it used to be, and she had spent so _much_ of it before now in that damned abyss that she was lucky to even remember her name, so that she never really worried about it. Most here didn't know their own ages, and didn't have anyone to care that they had yet another year under their belts. Just being alive long enough to remember that they had once been born was enough. They had started another life, anyways, being reborn in a sense, all the children that toiled and felt pain and killed here in their underground home. There were no parents, none to remind any of them what they had once been, although Rune heard once that Eliath was born here, that somewhere he had a mother and a father, even if they never acknowledge him. And he would never acknowledge them. They were, after all, only tools to bring him into the world. The only person he looked up to was Master. Rune agreed, on that point. Master Mykaeval was their mother and father, their captor and their redemption. Oh, she would never forget, never ever, that she had a life before, and that it was nothing as this was. She had a family, more of a Father than most. But she realized not long after she began her training that she had failed them all miserably. It was her catalyst. She had another chance, and she would never be that weak again.

A few years. Not a lifetime, but enough that she knew who she was, knew _what_ she was. 

It was during a mission. Eliath, the dark-haired brat, and she were to go and escort a powerful ally to the Senate building. Really, their first mission alone off-planet. 

"Seriously?" The disembodied head in the holo projector seemed dubious. "Just how old _are_ you? We don't need to baby sit, here." 

Eliath pushed her aside to answer. "Age isn't in question. It is below our Master's station to take care of this situation personally. We represent the wishes of our Master. Are you saying your employer would wish to sever his alliance with the Sith?"

It was because she was female, she knew. It always was.

The blurred head paused, seemed to be fumbling with something below the pickups. "Of course not…uh, Apprentice De'a," he stuttered out. "We will begin docking procedures with yours and Lady Ariala's ship." 

Rune bristled, pulling her hair into a tight knot, twisting, and sliding the clasp in place around the white. Her companion was chuckling softly to himself, his back to the girl as he pulled his cloak around his shoulders. Of all the nerve. Because she was a woman, only because, as if she didn't deserve the respect, as if that ass could speak for her. He was still laughing when she clipped her saber to her belt much harder than necessary, the otherwise silent shuttle reverberating with the snap. Turning, Eliath regarded her with haughty eyes. Recently, he had caught up with her in height, even surpassing her by a small degree, and used that advantage to no end. Now, he reached up with a still ungloved hand to pat her on the head. "Now now, are we angry? Please be on your best behavior for me, _Lady_ Ariala." The black-haired boy was still laughing as she hit his hand away, threatening further violence before they both heard the click-hiss of the airlock opening. 

The pair snapped to attention, although Eliath got in one final smirk before they took on twin rigid expressions. 

 [We _will_ discuss this later.]

 [Oh, my dearest Rune,] he cooed. No one had ever been able to project such oozing ego as Eliath via telepathy. [I wouldn't dream of it otherwise.]

Hitchless, they would say. The boy and girl performed their jobs. With their hoods pulled to shadow their features, no one questioned their age, no one even looked directly at either of the imposing figures that kept steady watch over the politician from afar. All just preliminaries, really, the meetings that began at the backwater planet named only with a slew of numbers. A suggestion or two was all that was required to ensure the success of the treaty, to set the stage for the bigger show at the Senate. 

At least Eliath made a show of being polite later as the pair was being shown from the dining room. They hadn't eaten. It was the easiest way to give an opportunity that needn't be given. Rune didn't talk, not after the politician's man had made such a show earlier about her age, still brooding on her anger that, when she let it, washed out in noxious waves bathing everything about her in a lurid pallor that could all but be seen. So, if they were alone, Eliath would have grinned maliciously as he requested a single room for the both of them, explaining merely that _Lady_ Ariala wasn't feeling well. Of course, they assented. Who would have told the boy no, even though the teen linked his arm around the pale girl's waist, pulling her down the hall of the massive Ambassador-class pleasure freight. It was unseemly, sending that girl, having her stay _there_. Eliath never felt the need to correct their thinking. And none of them would believe that they always shared a room, though not for that reason. Every night of _this_ lifetime, at least. "Just how old _are_ they?" an elderly woman managed to mumble to the housekeeper beside her as she wrung her wrinkled hands beneath her apron. "Can you imagine having a child like _that_ to love?"

When he tugged her through the mechanical door, the hydraulics whispering closed behind the pair, Rune punched him across the jaw, her entire weight behind the swing.

 "Bastard…" The girl was clenching her fist for another blow, just as soon as the black-haired boy stopped staggering and presented a clean target. He did slow, long enough for her to connect again, blood spattering in a wet ring beneath the skin, tumbling from the corner of his mouth in a glistening explosion of warmth.

He grinned, tumbling into the durasteel wall, knocking over a crystal vase of water and smashing it to the floor. The tip of his tongue darted from between his smiling lips, running along the cut at the crease of his mouth.

It was all the discussion needed. Rune let down her hair, the milky strands lapping at the tops of her shoulders, watching Eliath move about the room. When did we begin this pattern? He was…seventeen? Her previous topic of thought started up in her head, although it really wasn't important at all. He moved like a predator, even in the way he undressed, taking off his shirt, his scared back rippling like a tensing beast, ready to rip his enemies in two as he unassumingly splashed water on his face from the sink in the corner. She didn't love him, didn't even like him, really, although she admitted he was beautiful to look at. The other girls, the few that actually were students, and some just expensive concubines, told her as much. He liked to flaunt it. He knew he was a beautiful beast and, catching Rune's eye, took down his hair from the thick rope of braid, combing his fingers through the thick black. Pretentious bastard, she almost said, but it was a waste of breath, really.

And he knew what she thought of him as he sat beside her on the immaculate bed. He knew the creature that lay within _her_ verdant gaze. Rubbing his bruised jaw, he sighed.

"Pointless really. I can't see why Master has us wasting time with all this diplomatic shit." Eliath let himself fall backwards, cradling his head with his arm against the bedding. 

The girl exhaled sharply, her gaze narrowing as she looked down at him. "We have our orders. You should not question our Master…"

"Right, right," he dismissed her, adding in a lower tone, "of course. And we just can't go against Master." 

They sat in silence for a long while, Rune closing her eyes against the harsh glare of the artificial lighting. She almost forgot Eliath was there with her, stretching languidly over the expensive spread. If she closed her eyes like that, and regulated her breathing just so, she could bury the anxiety she had been masking all day…

"Sooo," Eliath's voice broke into her thoughts, "tomorrow's the big day, eh? Not worried about it, are you?"

Rune ground her teeth, the fine muscles of her jaw working spastically. "What do you mean?" she managed to choke out the remarkably calm question.

With a jostling of the bed, he had flipped onto his stomach, resting his head next to her thigh. "You haven't been home in…what? Five years or so, I would say." Smiles always looked jagged and sharp on his face. "Although, the Senate building is probably a little uptown from your old neighborhood…"

"Not my home," she interjected quickly, opening her eyes. Dark irises glittered with malice as he peered up at her through his bangs. But he didn't say anything more and neither did she.

Eliath was right. Rune had never been to the Senate building before. None of it mattered to her, though. From above, it was a different city altogether. Everything was bright and clean, ordered perfectly to fit in the spherical city. One could almost forget that another world existed below the benign looking layer of clouds that skirted the bottoms of the flight ways. The mission. Rune concentrated on that, although she found that the meetings on the Senate floor dragged on in the most horrible of monotones, being anything but a distraction. It wasn't just being on Coruscant again. It was what Coruscant _was_. Despite all the pretty decorum above, it was just the same as beneath. And it smelled. The smell of corruption was everywhere. Above the cloud line, it smelled just like the open sewers below.

The Senator seemed to back down and concede, and before nightfall, they had the outcome they were all expecting. In the banquet that followed, the Senator took the opportunity to introduce his new advisors from the newly formed tri-planet alliance. 

The second phase was much easier to implement. Besides the Senator, no one had left the ship as it remained in a lazy, wide orbit around Coruscant. Why should the aides question when the Senator, who often stayed days planetside after prearranged meetings, did not return with the dark clad youths. No one thought to check to make sure the ship's automated computers still allowed outgoing and intraship communications, or if, long after the main crew and housekeepers had retired, door lock codes had not been cycled to one, central code.

So it was with some slight consternation that one of the night guards, on making his rounds, found the door to the main dining room locked tight. Likewise, his hails to the Main Control from the comm station in the hall went without response. Even the halls, typically with some activity in the lull before the Senator's imminent arrival, were vacant. In fact the only person he saw upon a second sweep of the section of the ship to which he was suddenly confined was the tall female that had boarded earlier in the week. She was carefully and slowly folding her cloak, laying it on a settee next to the lounge before painstakingly removing a heavy overrobe, placing it in the same fashion. It struck him that she was not so slight as she had appeared as she rolled her pale shoulders beneath her tight fitting, sleeveless tunic, pacing the width of the hallway before her name came to him and he thought to call out. He tried to smile as her head snapped up in acknowledgement and she approached, flipping white hair from her brightly burning eyes while, with the other, executing a tightly controlled lunge with the weapon he hadn't even realized she was carrying until the explosion of heat in his throat told him otherwise. Above the choked gurgles that somehow leaked around the still smoldering hole just under his chin, he swore he heard her growl, "Don't ever call me Lady."

No thoughts pervaded the startlingly warm peace that had settled over Rune. The third night guard slid from the frictionless violet blade without having so much as called out when the girl rounded on him in the small guest room, effortlessly thrusting through the junction of his ribs just below an armpit, piercing both lungs before he could draw breath. Another tried to jump from behind the door of a small refresher, blaster held in a trembling hand that was separated from his wrist at the upstroke of an underhanded, arcing slash. The next instant, the girl's elbow met with the soft of the guard's temple, a fine spray of blood from his nose the only response as he dropped heavily to the floor. Removing all unnecessary connections, it was the natural course after a plan of this magnitude. Their Master never stipulated the means, just the orders to carry out after the Senator had cemented his deal.

At the third floor, she had lost count, really, until she found the head from the holo unit bobbing jerkily from behind two housekeepers and a guard who was only partially dressed. She must have surprised them, flinging open the Senator's private suites. It was only honorable to allow them, the last of her sections, to disentangle themselves from the mass of limbs and alcoholic haze she had found them in, the aid hastily flinging the two women in front of himself as soon as he pulled on his pants. The small knife that had been tucked in her belt beat out a patient cadence on the metal doorframe, her saber point lowered towards the floor in her other hand.

Just past the four, Rune could see herself in the polished steel walls. The knife was coated in blood that had run down her arm to the tip of her white elbow. Beneath the fine sheen of red on her face, her eyes were wild and glimmering with unrepressed ferocity. At first, the women wailed plaintively, and the guard at least attempted to quell his trembling in the face of death. But as she took a step towards them, her boots loud on the uncarpeted floors, she could see the waver in his courage. At least he didn't try to run when the girl lunged, plunging the blade into his sternum, not like one of the housekeepers, who found her legs and tried to dart behind them. A flick of the wrist. Rune's aim was off, but the knife buried itself in the older woman's stomach, and she stopped running. Turning her attentions back to the rest, she used both hands to drag the blade out the side of the guard's chest, severing the dead man's arm. A semicircle in the air, the violet saber reversed, just as she learned, cleaning slicing through the second housekeeper's shoulder, exiting her opposite hip.

The aid had wet himself, unbuckled pants falling to the floor as he sobbed, holding his hands up in placation. But it bothered Rune, to see such wanton cowardice, to have them reduced to begging. With a growl, she dropped her deactivated saber to the floor, snatching one of his fluttering hands to pull towards her. It gave with a snap, and he had just enough time to cry out before she lashed out, the toe of her boot cracking into his chin. She let him stagger into the wall, then, bouncing from the surface to flounder, face down, on the polished floor, blood from his mouth mingling with tears. Slowly, with all the grace and care of one with nowhere else to be, she bent over the dying housekeeper, wrenching the knife from her belly with a twist. The girl sauntered back to the aid, running a finger lightly across her forehead to tuck her hair behind her ear, and crouched to sit on the small of his back. He was still sputtering through the thickness of his own fluids, even as the young Apprentice took a firm hold of his hair and bent him back far enough to whisper in his ear. 

"Thank you for being such a hospitable babysitter."

Rune imagined he was still trying to babble even after she slit his throat.

Fifteen. In a few short years, the teen had learned the fine art of revenge, and took pleasure in the afterglow, standing in her shared room aboard the large, empty ship, her back to the door as she thoroughly wiped her gleaming knife on the edge of a white table runner she acquired from the hall. There was no reason, now, why she had to accept what anyone forced upon her in life. Even Eliath, who returned to her boot heel smashing into his chest and her forearm crushing into his throat as she held him against the wall. She reached for his long, black plait, pulling down on it, hard, to tilt his head towards her before capturing his lips roughly with hers, the still drying blood smearing across his face.

"Knew you'd come around…lover," he growled, wrapping his arms around her waist as she broke away from him, her eyes still hazy and half-lidded with brutality.

"I never said that I loved you," she whispered back.

"Love has nothing to do with it."

That night, their passion mirroring all the violence in their short, adolescent lives, she realized that really, it didn't.


	3. compassion

Compassion 

"How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!" – Marquis de Sade, _Philosophy in the Boudoir_

**"Murder isn't that bad, we all die sometime anyway."**

**-- Mary Bell to one of her guards**

Eliath De'a lay sprawled across his child-sized bed in the middle of two, ordered rows of identical, tiny beds that comprised the children's quarters. His pudgy legs alternately kicked in the air as they hung off the edge of the miniature cot seemingly unaware of the other children's angry grumbles as his bare heels beat out an irregular cadence against the unpolished steel frame. The head of the metal box, vibrating from the impact of the boy's feet, clanged discordantly into the stone wall against which it stood, now and then causing the supports to grind across the floor, throwing sparks that lit up the dreary underside of the bed, dying out as they landed on a misshapen pile of rags that was crowded beneath the frame. 

It was very early morning, but no one dared confront the dark-haired boy past half-mumbled curses, even though he still had the round face of one not quite a toddler, but not yet an adolescent. Eliath smiled, a broken, toothy expression in the dim morning light, pulling his right hand from where it was wedged beneath his head. For the tenth time in a few, short hours, he prodded the dark ring surrounding his swollen eye then raised his hand over his head, splaying his fingers as he twisted the appendage in obvious, silent praise. The blood was beginning to dry, but at certain angles, the thick fluid gleamed like a wet, polished jewel against the boy's pale, bruised skin. His fingers flew to his lips as he giggled, a high, childish peal echoing in the suddenly silent dorm, and the kicking began again with renewed vigor.

"De'a, get up." An older boy, taller than the child crouched in the center of the dorm room by at least a head, demanded the next day. Another boy and a girl, all from the oldest set of students still confined to group quarters, followed him closely. Eliath, however, merely glanced up and smiled as he pushed his black bangs from his face.

"Hi, Uleri," he responded brightly, pointedly emphasizing the boy's first name as he scratched at the healing bruise around his eye. "Sleep well?" 

Uleri narrowed his eyes, and one of the other boys pushed past him. "You little brat," the dark skinned boy spat. "Show your elders some respect!"

"You don't deserve my respect," Eliath replied in the same light tone, stretching his arms over his head. The chubby fingers of his right hand twitched, and he buried them in his long mop of hair. Uleri's cheek tensed, his hands balling to fists. "Going to hit me, Uleri? Just like that boy last night, going to bully the babies?"

The older boy faltered and took a step back, his fist unclenching. Eliath made a discouraging sound at the back of his throat. He stood, brushing the dust from his clothes. "How sad. There's no place for waste like you here, with compassion. At least when I told the boy last night, he still had the balls to hit me in the face. Isn't that right?" Eliath asked over his shoulder. He giggled, brushing his fingers over his lips and smiled more forcefully. The expression never reached his dark eyes as he stepped around the group, humming to himself as he skipped off at the class summons.

The trio did not move. They were staring in the direction the boy had thrown his innocent query. Beneath Eliath's bed, blood had blossomed on the dirty rags, decorating the tapered end of the oblong package. A trickle of crimson led away from the pile, marred only by two, tiny footprints. Above the thudding of their hearts, they could hear Eliath's laughter, echoing down the stone corridors. 


	4. dismissal

**_Dismissal_**

[**_A.N.: _** Hella short, but infinitely cool in a way that I cannot fathom. For Becca, who tells me I have wonderful stories when they probably aren't. ]

***

"Master N'ta, we've discussed this before…"

"At least test her…come and see her. You dismiss her without even seeing her potential!"

"And what will we do with her if she fails our test?" the voice intoned, never once changing cadence or raising in volume. "Would you be the one to tell her she has to go back?"

Master N'ta paused, multifaceted eyes shifting helplessly from face to face. "But she won't fail!"

"We are far more qualified to judge that," a soft, feminine voice interjected kindly.

"You haven't even--"

"She is too old. She was too old last month, and she will be too old in the months to come. We _have_ discussed this. We have guidelines--"

"Guidelines aren't law!"

"The word of the Council is final, Master N'ta."

"She's too valuable to discount! What happens if someday someone stronger comes, someone stronger even than the members of the Council, and they are merely too old?"

A gruff, reptilian voice spoke up. "The day that exception is made is the day our sect is forced into extinction." A chorus of stifled laughter filled the bright tower room.

"Masters!" N'ta pounded his segmented limbs against his sides in frustration.

"Calm yourself," came the order, and Master N'ta looked at the ground.

"It is unfortunate, but a child that old is too much a liability. To ensure our decision is followed, you are not to attempt to see that child again. Is that clear, Master N'ta?" The original voice managed to sound commanding and soothing at the same time, reminding N'ta of his position.

"Yes, Masters." Bowing stiffly, he did not wait for their dismissal. In all his years as a Jedi, the Council room had never felt so small.


End file.
